Sense and Nonsense

Overpaid College Presidents

Today's newspapers are reporting that 23 private college presidents made more than $1 million in 2008. Take a look at this article from today's New York Times. 

This is truly outrageous that many of these university presidents are being paid close to $1.5 million a year. Can anyone seriously say that the president of Suffolk University in Boston needs to be paid that much?  Or that Neil Kerwin (an old acquaintance of mine, now president of American University in Washington, D.C.) deserves to earn almost $1.5 million a year?  Nonsense.  The argument that these universities have to pay these salaries to be competitive for "top talent" is ridiculous.  The managerial revolution in higher education has produced bloated university bureaucracies with excessive salaries paid to far too many mediocre administrators.  

At some point soon, parents are going to stop ponying up the $50,000 per year demanded of private colleges and universities in this country.  And the first people to take a hit from the changing economics should be the overpaid administrators.  I can't wait!  Along with the greedy bankers, these people should be drawn and quartered.   

Problem Solved

U.S. Government Stages Fake Coup To Wipe Out National Debt

Sick Society

Take a look at this graph:  

Via Prosebeforehos.com:  

The image represents how much cash separates the top 1% from the bottom 99% of the population in the United States. It gets worse:

    During eight years of the Bush administration, the 400 richest Americans, who now own more than the bottom 150 million Americans, increased their net worth by $700 billion. In 2005, the top 1 percent claimed 22 percent of the national income, while the top 10 percent took half of the total income, the largest share since 1928….

    The highest incomes come from executive pay at top corporations. In 2007, the ratio of CEO pay to the average paycheck was 344 to 1, lower than the record 525 to 1 ratio set in 2001, but substantial.

This gross inequality is perpetuated and exacerbated by the shameful compensation practices of the big corporations and banks.   Get a load of this item from Political Irony, which says that Morgan Stanley, despite just posting its third quarterly loss, has set aside 72% of net revenues for bonuses.   Good lord. What a sick society.

Cool Map

From Strange Maps, via Cool Blogs.

Pain on Nantucket

The Bush recession has brought pain to Nantucket.

Californication

Don't Count on Congress

There are only a few conservative columnists worth reading.  David Brooks is one of them.  Although he is famously self-infatuated (he thinks he can blather on intelligently about ANYthing), he is nevertheless a very smart guy.  

His column in today's New York Times is typical of his better work. (He's okay when he's talking about American politics.  I just wish he wouldn't think of himself as capable of commenting intelligently on, say, Chinese culture.)  Brooks deftly outlines some of the political challenges ahead in dealing with the horrific accumulation of debt, and he rightly points out how inadequate Congress is to the tasks ahead. 

Congressional leaders have been fixated on short-term conventional priorities throughout this entire episode. There is no evidence that the power brokers understand the fundamental transition ahead. They are practicing the same self-indulgence that got us into this mess.

There is no group of people on earth less capable of leading us out of the mess that we are in than the members of the U.S. Congress.  What a sorry, pathetic, cowardly pack of morons -- Democrats and Republicans alike. 

Advice? 5¢

How to weather economic and social collapse:  Advice available here.

Grads Face Tough Job Market

Both the Boston Globe (here) and the Wall Street Journal (here) have front-page stories today about the brutal job market facing this year's crop of college graduates. 

I Hate the Pigs

© Rob Rogers